Karen Kirton  00:01 

Welcome to episode 112 and today I'm joined by Celeste Norman to discuss how small to medium sized businesses can go beyond using policies as a tick-a-box exercise and start to look at policies and governance a little bit differently. And Celeste is the founder of Rayne legal, which is a fractional legal practice specialising in financial services and fund management, and they provide clients across Australia with flexible in house legal and compliance resourcing to support sustainable business growth. So welcome Celeste. Thank you so much for having me, Karen. I'm super excited, because often people associate HR with the policy police, so today we are here to debunk that. And you know, in my experience, often business owners hear the word policy and they groan. eye roll. You know, especially startup founders. They don't want to be corporate, they don't want to implement red tape. So I'd love to start with your take on why policies are important, and how do we keep them fit for purpose? 

Celeste Norman  01:11 

And this is the trick to it right? Because policies are your practising principles for your business. So if you think about how you operate and how you would like to operate, and your kind of goals for your business, their overarching principles, they're not that nitty gritty that's in an SOP. They're not the step by step, role by role, play by play, of of a function in your business. They're those guiding lights that you as a founder or business owner, understand how you want to practice and where you want to get to and how you want to get there. But those often need communicating to other co founders or or managers in your business or external agencies that you you have coming in, providing services. But as you grow, they help communicate those expectations to staff, and that's a really critical way of having your staff come along for the journey with you. It ignites your culture and makes it a really tangible asset to have in your business. And I think that they're one of those things that you really don't understand the value of them until they're not there or they're not working, or they communicate something that's not quite 

Karen Kirton  02:24 

right. Yeah, that's so true. I see that a lot in the work that that we do in HR, and someone might say, well, this person's behaviour isn't meeting what we expect it to be. It's like, Well, where are your expectations? Where's your code of conduct? Like, so if we don't have something, and I like what you say about overarching principles, you know, some kind of, like guardrail almost, then how do we expect people to stay within that? Yeah, yeah. And 

Celeste Norman  02:52 

it's not enough to have, you know, when you have your company set up, you typically have a constitutional you have the replaceable rules that take on the role of a constitution. And those are practicalities for the running of your business, voting, decision making, authorities, etcetera, etcetera. But that is not in itself how you want to run your business. It's not how you want your culture to be or how you want your staff to be supported, or what you want your staff to achieve. And on the other side of that, on the other side of that, on the employee side of that, you've got your employment contract, but that's often a document that sets out the legal framework for employment and protects the employee in the worst case scenario. And it is really a last point of call. So when you have your policies, that can be HR policies, or they can be, you know, depending on your business, they can be an AFSL policy, or, you know, an operations management policy, or whatever the case may be. It outlines those in practice. Guard rails gives you a framework to work towards. Gives you a framework for all of your business to work within that's consistent and fair, and a lot of the time, the law will prescribe what should be in that policy as a minimum. And often you'll find the businesses go above and beyond that, for the betterment of their culture or for the advantage of staff or, you know, if they're doing something particularly innovative or different in their business, that's a really good place to have that communicated. And there is this stigma around policies being really dry and, you know, just a lump of informational in one document. But it doesn't have to be like that. That's a really old school way of basically having this employee beware. This is how we operate. You're meant to get yourself up to speed. It's over there on the chair drive or whatever it can be, a really interactive document that your your staff can help shape, particularly your early staff can help shape. And it's about continuous improvement, and continuously documenting that improvement in those in those documents. And you know someone when I come. Do a business, and someone hands me 100 page handbook, guide, or whatever that all employees are meant to read when they go in there, I know very well your employees aren't reading it, and that's where things slip through the cracks. So the policy conversation is really important, why you need it and how you can use it is really important, yeah, and 

Karen Kirton  05:20 

I think what you said about consistency and fairness is a huge part of it as well. And for me, that's how we build a workplace culture. If you don't have consistency and fairness, then your culture is not going to grow. And you made me think about a training session that I did with a middle management group on good governance, and it sparked some really interesting conversation around the importance of consistency when you're a manager. So as a simple example, if I'm a manager, and then I let my team take sick leave, but I don't ask them to apply for leave, and then my manager, colleague, who runs a different team, asks their team members to put in sick leave applications. Yeah, this causes some big cultural issues, but in most cases, also leads to bullying claims, because you have someone saying, Well, why am I always asked to put in a leave application? Yeah? So I wonder if you can share an example of where you've seen governance go beyond that tick-a-box and, you know, really get traction to help drive a business culture or efficiencies forward? Yeah, 

Celeste Norman  06:21 

definitely. And that's a really good example of inconsistency. And the policy says one thing, and part of your business goes above and beyond, but the other parts stick to the policy. Workplace flexibility. Flexible working, work from home is a really, really on, you know, current on point, example of where this has really gone wrong for some, for some businesses, in terms of, you don't want to document that you're being flexible, and you're giving away all this. You know, often that's a really scary thing for businesses to say, I'm going to be, we're going to be just doing a free fall. Anyone can work from home whenever. But we still want teams to have that organic touch point in the office, so you figure out when you're going to have your one day touch point, whatever. I think that is incredibly fraught with danger, and is a really current example of having a tick. It complies with the Lord tick. It's written down, you know, and then we'll apply it however we think suitable for our staff, to give them flexibility. And business owners think they're giving their staff something really great in terms of having that flexibility. But we all know humans don't go well when there are no guardrails. Yeah? Like it's it's just fraught. And we get this comparison anxiety around, yeah, well, but Joan has gone work from home four days a week, and inconsistently meets the one day touch point and because she's sick, or, you know, whatever, and it, it creates this toxicity of comparison within your business. So it's really important to say you have that policy document. It meets the legal requirements, but as a business, you are committed to offering your staff that flexibility. I would bring your staff along for that journey, put the policy document out for consultation, have some round table conversations, or stand up conversations with your staff about what patterns and systemic work from home days they're seeing, what systemic work from the office days they're seeing, and really embed that in your policy, commit to it, because without it written down, you're actually not committing to anything. And there's a risk that the business can then unwind that flexibility, which creates huge problems for staff that need childcare arrangements, that need to travel, that will have excessive spend on travel and those sorts of things. And when it's not in the policy, there's always a risk that the business can unwind those flexible arrangements with no notice. So it leaves your staff on edge. It creates this will they, won't they, kind of toxic comparison environment. So there's a lot of ways you can interact with your business, your business staff, in terms of having that consultation point. And it could be Survey Monkey survey to say, are you in 321, days a week? What's your ideal day to be in the office? How can we better support you to be travelling into the office. Or do we have enough desks? Do we not have enough desks? Do we have enough facilities for lunchtime? Do we are our office premises close enough to food that people can purchase? Or is it too expensive, and you know, you're dragging six bags to and from it? All those sorts of human questions can be asked, and it's important that they are asked, because when hit your when your human resources are involved in those conversations, they feel ownership over turning up when they said they're going to turn up and being available work from home, and having all of the technology and equipment they need to effectively work from home, because they're committing to working from home. I mean, you're committing to allowing it to it's a really good example, I think, of this really big disparity, the company is doing it really well, and companies doing it terribly. And there's always improvement that can be done there. One of the other considerations in that respect is employers and businesses often think, Oh, if we give, if we give employees this say on something pretty critical to the business operating model and bottom line, they're going to just take advantage. In my experience, what I've seen is that that doesn't happen. The more empowerment you give your staff, and the more you treat your staff like adults, and the more you have them in those consultation processes, the more they actually commit to better performing, to performing to the expectation set. And they will actually go above and beyond the business expectations of their performance. So they'll work more, they'll work harder, and they see the tangible value coming back out the other side. So you have a lot more buy in? 

Karen Kirton  11:00 

Yeah, I completely agree. I think that, you know, we all like to feel like we've been heard, and to just have that opportunity to put your say out. Can actually just get rid of a lot of passive aggressiveness gossip, you know, all of those behaviours that kind of sit on the sidelines, because if someone starts complaining, then their colleagues are more likely to say but hang on, Celeste, you had an opportunity to have your say. You know, the company's done the best that they can, versus top down, bang. Everyone's now back to the office three days a week. So yeah, and I think you know, like what you said about it, being in writing and being in a policy it gives people comfort that it's there. But also, if a new manager walks in, they can't then put their own stamp on it. If they don't believe in working from home, it's like, well, that's too bad, because it is actually in that document. This is what we've committed to as a business, 

Celeste Norman  11:55 

exactly. And your policy commitments as a business can be a really great employer brand marketing tool to to attract the right stuff. Like the whole point is that you are operating in a certain way, and you want to attract people who want you to operate in that certain way. So you present yourself to the market consistently with your practices. So when people start and are employed with you, they go, yep, right. They're they're doing exactly what they said. There's no dysfunction around you promised X and you're delivering y, which can be really problematic when you've got long probation periods, because the employee can self select too. 

Karen Kirton  12:34 

Yeah, absolutely. Now, we've talked quite a bit about governance and policies and sustainable practices, but you know, one of the things I try and always do with this podcast is give practical advice. So for a business owner or a leader listening today, what is one simple, high impact action that they could take this week to improve governance, compliance or operational efficiency in their business? 

Celeste Norman  12:59 

Oh, okay, one tip to create efficiencies around your operations and your governance, I would say, is to sit down really honestly, reflect on how you do business, and not in terms of your client interaction, your customer interaction, about how your staff operate, how your processes operate, and really have a an honest conversation with yourself about what you have and each instance of efficiency that can be gained, and that's a front to back review of yourself as well as your business, because a lot of founders, you know, once they get growth and gains in their business, don't turn around and look to well. We had that. We had the match stick foundation, and that did us well. But we've now really got to build that out, and we've got to make that really good, and, you know, sustain over time, and, you know, prevent all of those tests and trials that that happen in a grow up phase when you don't have that foundational base. So I would say, spend the time, you know, block out an hour and a half, sit down, go end to end. Talk to all the people in your business that you need to talk to ask them, How does your job work? How do you function? What is and not from a micro managing perspective, from a I want to understand exactly where we can make things more efficient and where you can automate, adopt technology or investigate technology technological solutions, because huge efficiencies can be gained with your human resources by taking them out of functions that can be automated or functions that can have technology assistance, and using that to then say, well, what do you want to learn? Where do you want to upskill? Where can we. They teach you to expand their horizons. Have them growing with the business at the same time, and, gosh, you're, you're creating money for Jan, really, because you, you're gaining time, and time is something that you can't get 

Karen Kirton  15:15 

back. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that with the, you know, the continual rise of AI, it's actually a good lead in, isn't it? And episode 105 I had a chat with Janie and Trevelyan, intelligence assist around you, bringing AI tools into the workplace. And so I could see how you could put those two things together and say, okay, Celeste, you know, I want to have a look at AI tools and technology and the business that can help you, you know, take me through, you know, your role and what are your current challenges and blockages? And I think, yeah, they'd be really valuable conversations and 

Celeste Norman  15:48 

conversations that bring the employee in. So it's not a matter of like, do you tell me what you do so I can replace you with AI. It's gotta be a very frank conversation. I promise you that we are trying to make this more efficient. We want to take you on our journey with us. We want to take you on the journey with us, and we want to give you additional skills. We want to we want to upskill you. We want you to learn. We want you to be invested in this business as much as we are, and we will do that for you. But I want to understand where your pain points are. I want to understand the irritants in your role. I want to understand where you wake up on a Monday morning and you feel sick to the stomach, or you are exacerbated by coming into work. What is driving that? What's doing that? And often it's not anything to do with the culture. It has a lot to do with I think I can do my job better. I think I can do things differently, but no one will listen to me. No one's asking me. And I am the I am the expert here. This is my job. And you get, you know, staff to document the SOPs and, you know, write this and that, but nothing ever really shifts. So that self reflection piece is you saying, humbly, you are the expert about this function, I want you to teach me where we're getting it wrong, and that's an iterative process, and you might not fix everything straight away, but gosh, people have great ideas, and they know their function inside and out, and it's the best place to 

Karen Kirton  17:16 

start. Yeah, absolutely. And we mentioned before that you run a fractional legal practice, and so it's far to my interest, because we also offer fractional HR services with my business, amplify HR, and it's a term that is gaining more traction in Australia, but I still do have people ask me, what is fractional so for those who aren't familiar. Can you explain a little more about what a fractional legal practice is and how you work with clients? Definitely, 

Celeste Norman  17:46 

fractional isn't particularly new in its characteristics to the legal industry. You know, everyone's gone through understanding that there's secondments. So you have lawyers in law firms that second out to private businesses for weeks or months or whatever. So the idea of that fractional characteristic is not necessarily new in the market anywhere, but the use of the term fractional is and there's it's this concept where there's a lot more SME businesses that have started up and are growing up, and there's a lot more innovation going on, so a lot more businesses starting, and you can see by the insolvency rates that a lot of those don't do well, and I think that's because there's no ability to tap into really effective, experienced people without hiring. And you know who has 250, 300 grand to throw around for one executive in a startup? You just don't and in the business world, in my experience, often the innovators are ideas people that need those people behind them that have that really niche experience in marketing, legal, ops, you know, you name it, there's a fractional out there for it. But and particularly HR people management is a really it's a really important area of business that's fraught with danger because you don't know what you don't know. And often the rules don't always make sense. You think they would, but, you know, it frustrates me, even as a lawyer, sometimes the rules just don't make sense. But it's this notion of i as a business owner, as a founder, I have a great idea, I want to bring it to life, and I need great people, but I don't want to pay an external law firm or a marketing agency or a HR agency to handle it for me. I want someone who is willing to talk to me about my business, understand why I want to do things differently, understand how I want to achieve things. Talk to people in my business, to lack there in the business. I want them to be strategic. Physically involved. I want them to seem like they have skin in the game. That is a fractional so you essentially pay for these highly experienced, highly intelligent and practised people to come in and be your part time resources for these things and the fractional for my practice, particularly often you start out in a project, and you offer that expertise in a in a bit of a test environment, and you deliver the project, and it works out really well. Then, you know, 80% of the time people will roll into retainer engagement, one or two days a week, or one or two days a fortnight, or whatever the cadence is that the client needs, and you'll be that touch point. You stay up to date on everything that's happening in the business. You advise you do if, if doing is not part of your engagement, you can refer people in to do. And the fractional thing is different, just a comment in a little bit of what in a few ways, but mostly because, when I engage as a fractional legal resource for a business, you you can tap my network, and you understand, once you get this level of experience, your network is is broad, and your network of your Network is also yours. So there's this fountain of knowledge and experience and that your clients can tap into that is actually invaluable and surpasses the cost of a fractional resource, and it also grows with you. So I don't need to be engaged full time. My experience lends itself to me, understanding your business when I step foot in it, and when I talk to you, and when I feel your energy, and when I understand what you're trying to achieve, I know your business, and I'll talk to the next you know, I'll talk to your staff. I'll understand their functions. I'll be your ears in your business. I'll be boots on the ground. I will help people get things done. I will, you know, manage strategic projects. I will, you know, whatever the engagement is, it can be tight scope, or it can be quite a broad Bau scope, but it's basically just to get that expertise in the business at a fraction of the cost of a full time. And you've got no overheads. You've got one fee covers it all. If it doesn't cover it all because you you've scoped things out, then you know you can expand scope as you go. But it really works for founders. And what I'm seeing in the legal sector is lawyers want to be operating like this, particularly in financial services. The reason I started my business is because I've been in house and I've been private practice, and there's this chasm between the two. You either are strategically involved or you're providing an advice and that's it. And clients in the financial services and funds management sector particularly need need the legal resource to understand the strategic outcomes and drivers and achievements to be able to provide the advice, but then also the implementation of that advice, which goes back to in house. So my service covers that all, and I'm finding that that's quite a usual thing in terms of HR fractional, like marketing fractional, operational, fractional, they they understand the business and can can implement, but they can also provide that really, you know, intricate, intricately detailed advice and direction. Because ultimately, even in law, there's no right way. In business, it's all about perspective and adaptability and circumstantial and all of that. So you need that strategic understanding to be able to fit the rules to the business. 

Karen Kirton  23:53 

Yeah, it's really that true partnership, isn't it? It's kind of like you're you're essentially there outsourced internal lawyers so that you can really deep dive into the business. Yeah, I love that. Yeah. And so, before we wrap up today, I know we gave you sort of the one like practical tip. But are there any sort of overarching top tips for businesses to that are looking to grow and need to be more sustainable with their business practices. Are there things that you would say, these are the things to focus on or look for? 

Celeste Norman  24:29 

Yeah, there's, there's a few things in terms of making sure that you're not diving into things you know when, when you're growing there's this real, really big push to just to get in and start, just start. I would recommend, from all of my experience, and what I've seen is that sometimes pressing pause, getting people in a room, and having that initial conversation about this, is the concept. It. Sound and trusting the people in your business that specialise in those functions, trusting that they know what they're talking about, trusting that they understand the pain points and where the trouble will lie. Because once you start, you get going and you you're working towards something. You're spending money, whether that's time with your employees, or actually walking out money to for specialist areas. That's time you can't get back, and that's money that could be spent better somewhere else. So it's important that you you get all of your important in in some businesses, that's Everyone, get everyone together, say, as a founder, as a as a business manager, this is what I want to do. I think it's a good idea. Tell me why it's not. Tell me where we're going to film fail down, fall down. You know, how can we do it better? That that is number one. That short spend on having a strategic concept conversation before you start executing will be, you know, 30% 40% of your planning for your project that you'll be able to take some action items away from and some, you know, we've got to do this before we do this. The other thing I think about, which is probably really timely with recent conversations, is information security and cyber it doesn't matter what business you are, it doesn't matter what you sell, it doesn't matter what services you provide, if you do not have sound cyber security and tech processes, and not just a piece of paper that says this is how we do things, but you actually have active protocols in place that are multi factor authentication. You do penetration testing for your external systems. You have an external security provider. You have cyber insurance as a last resort. These sorts of practices. You You have password practices, etc, etc, you could name a number, but if you don't have those in place, you are critically failing a low hanging fruit item for regulators, and that is, I tell clients all the time, it's a really dumb thing to get pinged on from a regulator when it's you know, all of your emails have multi factor authentication that you can just turn on with a button, and you have password protections that you know don't write your password down on a post note stick it on the computer. All of those really like tech hygiene issues invaluable to get your business across. Do cyber training. It's a cost that's worthwhile. Do phishing email training, it's a cost worthwhile. Have an external tech provider that can handle these things for you, if you're too small, and there are so many providers that are very cluster efficient, and they target the SME market, because it is a market that has a potential to be really damaging. You think about, you know, you think about your business if, if something went from went wrong, from a cyber perspective, who's going to wrangle everyone to to get it fixed and to stop the bleed? You you're going to be waking up at 2am when there's something gone wrong, to say, you know, in trying to get employees on to help fix it, but empowering your staff with these conversations is really important, and staying up to date with market trends. You know, not not being competitive focused. I absolutely believe that you should not be competitive focused. It's all about your journey, but understanding trends in the market that impact your business in terms of AI, you know what's happening there different investments you can make your business can make in terms of computing or automation, or different specialisations, like the fractional movement. Have you have your businesses thought about that. It's a really good way to give your business growth a leg up without having that spend of a full time employee. All these kind of no like, the market's constantly moving. And I think it's really important for business owners and founders to stay up, you know, and whether that's subscribing to a newsletter through Instagram or LinkedIn or, you know, I don't recommend turning on the TV, because I think it's all a fast these days, but stay like keeping your finger on the pulse, basically, and seeing how you can integrate any of those movements into your business. And some of them will be throwaway ideas, fine, but, you know, sticking with it and not getting stuck in that rut of, well, this is how we've always done things. This is this is safe. You know, I think being a business owner, if you're uncomfortable, you're doing great. Yeah, 

Karen Kirton  29:50 

you've got to have an external view, don't you, as a business owner, like you've got to actually allocate time if you're weak, to do that, because probably no one else in your. Your business, it's doing that for you. So I look thank you so much for your time today and just finally, Celeste, what's the best way to get in touch with you or follow your content? Definitely. 

Celeste Norman  30:13 

Thank you. I have a website that's rayne.com.au, or I'm pretty active on LinkedIn and Instagram. I do some articles that help financial services and fund management businesses, particularly with their legal compliance risk and governance requirements. So just operational tidbits and how to achieve things a little bit easier, but available on all the socials or by mobile or email. But yeah, the website's probably the easiest way to find all 

Karen Kirton  30:42 

that awesome, and we'll put links to that into the show notes as well. And it is Rayne R, A, Y, N, E, so just people are using their favourite search engine to look the links in there. And so for those listening, if you've seen value for this episode, I would love it if you could leave a rating or a review over Apple podcast or Spotify, so someone else can also find the episodes to help with their business. Episodes released on Mondays, so click subscribe, and you'll be notified when it's available. And of course, if you have any feedback, questions or ideas for future episodes, head on over to amplify hr.com.au, or connect with me on LinkedIn, and we can start a conversation. Thank you so much, Celeste, it's been an absolute pleasure. 

Celeste Norman  31:27 

Thanks, Karen, it's been a pleasure as well.